Most of us working on these challenges do it with no expectation of any rewards -- unless you count creative pleasure, development and perfection of career skills, pride of craftsmanship, and earning the respect of peers in the industry a reward.

The Christmas Challenge (#13) introduced the idea of having specific prizes for the first time. It may be a co-incidence that the Christmas Challenge was one of the most successful challenges we've had so far. But maybe having prizes helps.

We have 2 winners so far:

Uday Kadkade
Dan Konieczka
They will have a choice of 2 prizes: either the "Beer at SIGGRAPH" prize or the "Lunch at Pixar" prize will be theirs for the taking, at such time as they are present at the SIGGRAPH 2008 conference in Los Angeles or visiting Emeryville, CA. Substitute prizes, such as "Lunch at SIGGRAPH" or "Buy me a drink next time you are in my country" may be arranged if neither of these prizes can be claimed in person. Photographs will be taken of the receipt of these prizes and posted on cgtalk so that others can see the winners enjoying their prizes. Uday has earned 2 prizes, and he is welcomed to claim both of them at a time of his choosing -- if anyone doubts that Uday earned two prizes, I encourage you to look through the thread at all of the terrific images he created.

-jeremy

PS - I started a new thread to announce this because I want to post updates on the prize issue (transparency is important to any process, people need to see things working here) but also because I thought there might be comments on the idea of prizes: do we want to find sponsors to donate prizes of more cash value? Or do we all understand that we aren't going to get rich off this, and not need corporate tie-ins? Should we have some more official or democratic judging system instead of one guy (me) trying to judge all of the work?

gregsandor

04 April 2008, 06:04 PM

The prize and motivation here ought to remain the pure pursuit of art and helping each other advance the art of lighting. There is no shortage of prize-driven contests, and definately no shortage of advertising venues for companies. Improved skill, helping others, and bragging rights is fine; a friendly beer or lunch is nice too. More than that and the nature of the competition will change dramatically.

rajeshav

05 May 2008, 08:30 AM

Hi jeremy,

First of all I would like to thank you for giving us such a great oppertunity to improve ourselves
with this chllenge forum and your valuable suggestions and critiques.This forum also help us to show our work and see others work and share our different ideas.And for me, an artist who is only have so little experiance in lighting,once you said I like your image and I feel very much
motivated and honoured.You are the right person to give us suggestions and judge our work,
and your suggestions and critiques are valueable than any prize which we can buy with money.
Thanking you once agin and expecting more beautiful and challenging Lighting challenges form you.

I tried many times, but, or don't can be render because of memory problems, or the 2 milions of polygons just block the viewport, etc. =/

Please, help me.....I wanna try the texturing and ilumination, but, my pc is not helping. Or, I'm really such in this....hehehehe

PS: Sorry...my english is terrible =)
PS2: Sorry for post this here. =X
PS3: Jeremy, thanks for all your help and time of dedication to the forum ^^

tuffmutt1

05 May 2008, 05:50 PM

wow! thanks Jeremy for the prizes. being in India currently i wont be able to claim them but will catch up some time in the future for sure. these challenges made me look at the same scene in different ways than i would otherwise, partly from your feed back and partly from seeing others approach to the same scene. so i was a bit surprised that there seems to be a prize issuse or whatever. i think you hosting these challenges and our images along with the CGTalk forums is prize enough for anybody, and getting critics from you as well as others is just pure bonus.
Thanks again to everyone who participated and gave a critic to me and everyone else. lets learn a few things and have fun doing it.
I cant wait for the next challenge to play with. .
Uday Kadkade

kanooshka

05 May 2008, 08:42 PM

Wow! Thank you very much Jeremy! I had figured you were very busy with Wall-E so I hadn't checked the Christmas Challenge forum in awhile. I was quite surprised to say the least. I'm just glad I could help out as much as I could. The challenges here are just a great learning environment for everyone. It's nice to have everyone helping each other instead of strictly competing for a goal. Thanks everyone for all the C&C's and thank you Jeremy it's very helpful and kind of you to take the time to help us lighters to grow. As for my prize I'm currently living on the east coast and can't afford SIGGRAPH this year but I definately will be coming out to CA sometime to claim my prize. I look forward to more of these challenges!

nitroPHORUS

05 May 2008, 11:25 AM

Hey Uday,

!! Congratulations MAN !!

Great work brother and all the best for the future. Hope to see your good works again..

Keep up the good work...

Regards,
Nitesh

rajeshav

05 May 2008, 03:18 PM

congrates uday and kanooska,for your terrific performence,keep it up and expecting more from you people.

DizzyJ

05 May 2008, 03:38 PM

Could the winner's entries be reposted here? Those threads can get pretty long.

punytjoshi

05 May 2008, 05:52 PM

Hey congrats uday for winning this prize.

tuffmutt1

05 May 2008, 12:25 PM

Thanks nitz3D, congrats to you too for getting your stuff into the gallery.

Thank you rajeshav for the kind words.

Thanks punytjoshi...I appreciate that.

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05 May 2008, 12:25 PM

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